You can already beat your friends at sports and video games, so why
not beat them at conserving energy too? A
recent project conducted in the Netherlands called Energy Battle pitted teams
of students against each other in an effort to win prizes by cutting their
energy usage. The winning team managed to cut its usage by a whopping 45%, while all of the teams involved cut, on average, 24%.
A start-up called SimpleEnergy
is bringing a similar approach to the market in the United States. It reads your utilities usage and allows you
to compete with friends via a Facebook app to see who can save the most energy. Even if you don’t manage to bring
home one of the prizes (ranging from gift cards all the way up to Ipads),
you’ll still feel like a winner the next time you get your electric bill.
Can you think of any other interesting ways that gamification could be
used to encourage people to be more environmentally conscious?
Here's a related facebook app for social conservation of energy http://www.webpronews.com/facebook-launches-new-social-energy-app-2012-04
ReplyDeleteCool. Looks like it's only in the US right now so we'll have to tell some of our friends to sign up and tell us about it. We found another great example that we'll be posting a blurb about later today. Stay tuned.
Delete